


Take the Rocket Ship

by Project5tbd



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Ben Parker is a great uncle, Female Peter Parker, Gen, Wholesome, because we support women in STEM that's why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project5tbd/pseuds/Project5tbd
Summary: In which, six-year-old Penny Parker attends a science fair and falls in love. Uncle Ben probably doesn't realize what he's releasing onto the world, but he's supportive anyway.(I wrote this as a prologue for a longer story, but I almost like it better like this.)
Relationships: Ben Parker & Peter Parker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 95





	Take the Rocket Ship

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, the author needs endorphins and this has been sitting on my drive for months. I own nothing but my mistakes. Please enjoy!

If Penny Parker had been asked to name the one concrete, fundamental, proverbial apple-falling-from-the-tree moment of realization that led to Everything, capital E (this shit ended up getting  _ big  _ and  _ real _ ) she never would have thought to mention that the day began with waffles and orange juice just like every other Saturday morning she could remember. Not that waffles and orange juice weren’t part of her “origin story” or because they weren’t important (They were. Penny had had numerous fights about the superiority of waffles over the years) but because they were defining on a subconscious level that six-year-olds don’t typically think about. 

No, what was important about  _ that _ day was that it was the day that Penny Parker fell in love. Specifically, with science. Or, to be even more specific, it was the day she fell in love with engineering. 

It was spring break, which didn’t mean too much to six-year-old Penny. It felt like a really long weekend with no Ned and she had been walking hand-in-hand with Uncle Ben on the way back from the grocery store, clutching the bag of goldfish Ben had entrusted to her in the crook of her free arm. The weather was still cool but warming like a cat left out in the sun, a timid warmth creeping into the air. 

“Can we watch a movie when we get back?” 

“Sure thing, Penelop-pie. What should we watch?”

Penny put on her thinking face, exaggerating the scrunch of her eyebrows like Aunt May did when she was thinking about letting Ben and Penny get second helpings of dessert. 

“Nemo?”

“I think we could probably swing that.” 

A couple blocks away from home, however, Ben turned down a different street, the one towards her school. She didn’t go back for four more days. Why were they going this way? 

“Why are we going to school?”

“You’ll see when we get there,” Ben said, grinning down at her. “You’ll like it. I promise.”

Penny put her thinking face back on. Maybe school had started early and Uncle Ben and Aunt May forgot. Maybe Ned was back and they were going to play at the playground! Maybe her teacher had called them in to talk about Penny’s latest art project, a construction paper creation spanning the length of her arms widespread that Penny was incredibly proud of. It had taken four whole art days to finish. Deciding that this was the most likely scenario with the outlandish confidence that Penny never seemed to be able to muster in her teens, she skipped along, swinging her hand with Ben’s. 

“I think you’ll like it too.” 

“You do, huh?”

“Yep!” Penny announced, popping the p. 

She had used his favorite colors after all, green and orange, and it was a drawing of them, her, Ben, and Aunt May in front of the tiger exhibit at the zoo, smiling and wearing their matching red shirts. They always wore red just in case Penny got lost and needed to find them, but the shirts in the picture didn’t distract from the orange blur of a tiger that Penny had colored using all of her concentration to make sure each stripe was different from the others. Ms. Clara had praised her attention to detail. Ben would love it. 

Nearing the school, Penny saw a banner that wasn’t usually on the fence, fluttering in the wind, big green letters proclaiming a “something-she-couldn’t-read-yet fair”. She liked fairs though. Corn dogs were one of her favorites. But still, fairs were outside and the playground was devoid of game booths, cotton candy, or shrieking kids, which was confusing. And now she wouldn’t get to show Ben her drawing. Penny brushed off her disappointment, Ben had said she’d like it and he was usually right about most things. 

Ben led them up the steps through the front door, where a hunched old man, with glasses and crazy hair was handing out pamphlets with bright pictures and words Penny could only read in snatches. 

“Eyes up, kiddo. You’re going to walk into a wall and knock all your brains out,” Ben warned. 

“Brains can’t just fall out.” Everyone knew that. You had to spin around really really fast and  _ then  _ your brain would go flying out of your nose. At least, that’s what Conner had said and his dad was a doctor. 

“Brains fall out all the time.” 

Now Penny was concerned. Her hand tightened over Ben’s as they walked over the grey tiled floors towards the gym, where a loud indistinguishable hum of voices was broken by the occasional sharp exclamation. 

“What happens if my brain falls out?” 

“Well, your Aunt and I would be terribly sad, especially if you lose it because brains aren’t cheap. We’d have to put up posters around the neighborhood and then we’d go out looking for it, but you’d have to stay at the hospital because they don’t let kids without brains run around like wild animals.” 

“The hospital!” 

Penny had only been to the hospital a few times, once when she split her chin open and needed stitches, because the blood was  _ everywhere _ and her babysitter Kenna had been crying, and then another time because Ben had taken her to help drop off food for Aunt May. She’d hated it. It had smelled bad, and it was too cold, and everyone looked scared and rushed. 

“Mhmm, for three whole days. Don’t lose your brain, kiddo.”

They stepped into the gym, and Penny promptly lost her brain. There were booths, like at the outside fair, but these weren’t filled with balloons or stuffed monkeys, or pokemon dolls. These had plants, and snakes she could pet with two fingers, quick down their spines, and volcanoes that gurgled and oozed, and marble tracks, and grownups wearing white lab coats and gloves who were talking to kids just like her. And robots, in a ring at the center of the gym, which Penny only saw after she had hauled Ben around the displays bouncing with excitement.

The robots were about half her height, boxy and on wheels and were engaged in some sort of robot battle, pushed up against one another, straining with the whir of their motors, metal sumo wrestlers, trying to shove the over over the white taped line of the ring. Penny watched as two teenagers with control pads in their hands prompted the robots to continue their struggle, watched as one of the robots finally succeeded and watched the triumph in the teenager’s eyes as he began excitedly talking to an adult who was leaning over his shoulder. 

Penny dropped Ben’s hand and edged through the crowd of people who were beginning to disperse now that the show was over. If she could just talk to him, maybe touch the robot, the magic might rub off on her. Would he let her? She didn’t know anybody with a robot. Maybe they were expensive, too expensive for her to touch, nevermind play with. Then again, Ben always said it couldn’t hurt to ask about dessert so maybe this was like that. Wow, the boy was tall. She reached out and poked his elbow. He didn’t look her way, so she poked him again a little harder, and said in her politest voice, “Excuse me.”

He finally did look down at her, and he didn’t seem at all angry, which was the first step to an accomplished mission. 

“Can I help you? Are you lost?”

Penny stared at him, unable to communicate her dying wish through her uncooperative mouth that was strangely slack and dry as she tried to remember what it was she wanted so badly through her awe. His puzzled brown eyes met her gaze. Desperate to communicate, but knowing that words were beyond her, she glanced to and from him and his robot, pleading with the universe to let him understand. A horrible moment of stupefied anticipation passed before the boy’s face cleared and he held out his controller. 

“Do you wanna try?”

That’s how a panting Ben found her ten minutes later with the boy guiding her fingers along the control pad, pointing at the robot as it moved in response to her commands, chattering away about how hard it had been to get the programming exactly right, how he’d had to balance mobility with concerns for stability all while under a weight constraint, his excitement infectious and captivating. 

……...

And two days later, at night, right before bed, resting on her beloved blue plaid bedspread, was a black plastic case with a red gift bow, shiny and sparkling like it had glitter painted over it.

“Huh, looks like Santa must have forgotten one.” Uncle Ben smiled and winked at Aunt May who was shaking her head in the doorframe with fond exasperation, the unspoken “Penny is too smart for this” lacing her words with amusement. 

“It’s March, honey.”

“No, I got a letter straight from the man himself! This one fell out in the back, and he didn’t see it until he was doing some spring cleaning for Mrs. Klaus.”

“If he had cleaned when Mrs. Klaus asked him, maybe he would’ve found it sooner,” Aunt May retorted. 

“Can I open it?” Penny cut in, voice hopeful. A gift without an occasion was unheard of, Christmases and birthdays, yes, but a random day in March? This had to be the best day of her life. 

“Well, if you’d rather wait until your birthday, I’m sure we can find space for it in our closet.” 

“No!” Penny yelped. Her birthday was in August, that was  _ years  _ away. “No, I’d like to open it now, please.”

“Go ahead then,” Ben chuckled, waving her towards her bed. 

Penny approached the case with slow, reverential awe. The case was a smooth black matte, grey plastic clasps holding the lid down. She carefully removed the gift bow and sat it to the side -- she could use it for an art project later -- and then touched the plastic clasps and lifted up just like she did with Ben’s tool box. She hesitated and looked up. 

“Go on,” Ben encouraged, watching her, his arm wrapped around May’s waist. 

She lifted the lid. The space inside the case was filled with plastic compartments separated into boxes with nuts and screws and flat metal bars, sorted by size and color, rubber bands, washers, a small wrench, and a hex key. 

“It’s an Erector set. I had one when I was a kid. You can build planes and cars, or whatever you want with it.” 

Penny spun around, her eyes wide, tears welling up, overwhelmed.

“For me?” 

“For who else, Penelop-pie? Unless you think Santa got the wrong house,” Ben teased.

“Santa never gets the wrong house,” she sniffed. 

Without a second thought she got up and threw her arms around Ben’s legs and squeezed with all the force her tiny body could muster, the rough denim of his work jeans pressing into the soft skin of her cheek. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too, kiddo.” His hand rested on her back, strong and warm through her pajamas. Ben smelled like sweat and the clean scent of their laundry detergent. “More than anything.” 


End file.
